Tabled Woodcut

Coffee table crafted from cancelled woodblock printing plate.

Tabled WoodcutFurniture & Printmaking Design

Reimagining the multifunctional surface of the tabletop, I have created The Woodcut Table. By fashioning a table top out of Kentucky Coffee Tree wood I create a surface that while solid, is specked with a very open grain pattern which I have laser-etched with a roads-only map of Winnipeg, the city I call home. By isolating only the streets of Winnipeg and underlaying them with the natural grain of the wood, I am exploring the relationship of our man-made grid of roads with the natural grain patterns of the wood. Printmaking is a large part of my life, and one that I feel is an intimate process. In printmaking the artist spends the most time not with individual prints, but with the plate itself. Hours at a time devoted to this tool and the imprint it leaves upon the surface of the paper. After printing an edition of 10, the plate had to be cancelled as to not be printed further. This table is my celebration of that cancellation, a plate that has now been pierced by the angular base that it rests upon. No longer shall it be used as a tool in the creation of artwork, but as artwork itself, celebrating the tool that has become the extension of the artists hand in creating their prints.